PLEASE SPONSOR ME  With (at least) 3 stone/42lbs to lose within a year (Starting from November 11th) I shall diet sensibly and healthily and also keep fit.

In return, I promise to honour your donation PLUS I will give you a few good laughs, tears and insight along the way via my blog by visiting

http://posterous.com/people/YXpBM8q4cgh

NOW FOR THE SERIOUS BIT... WHY AM I DOING THIS?

 This day last year, at the time I am now writing this, I was desperately trying to be calm and sleep. I had a horrific sounding cough and was nearly 6 months pregnant with our daughter Penny. I had to call my husband Elliott home from his night shift as I was finding it so difficult to breathe, I needed to get to an emergency doctors appointment at Watford General Hospital, and someone needed to stay behind and look after our son Oliver.

I paced around the house waiting for him, pumping ventalin that a doctor had given me previously to help with this cough, it didn’t help, it never had, and they wouldn’t medicate me as they were worried due to the pregnancy. 

I drove myself to the hospital about 5am and they checked me over before deciding that I would need to be observed for a longer period and settled me into a bed in the Acute Admissions Unit that was a modern well equipped part of the building. I was given nebulisers (face masks that produce a steam steroid to open up the lungs and ease breathing) had blood gasses taken via stabbing needles directly into my wrist artery and spoken about by all the medical staff, but even though I kept in high spirits, nothing felt like it worked. I was kept in over night and hated EVERY MINUTE of being away from my home. I couldn't sleep, I couldn’t breath, and I was uncomfortable and worried.

(In a nut shell) The next day November 9th I was discharged as my lung capacity had improved to the very lowest of the expectable rate. I stayed at my parent’s house as I was just exhausted and desperate to sleep and not fit (Literally) for mothering Oli. That night I felt like I was suffocating, my cough was worse, my back and chest was itchy inside, NOTHING felt like it was helping so my parents took me straight back to A&E and I was taken back to the Acute Admissions Unit and hooked up to more nebulisers and canulars into my wrists. I was getting worse so they put me upstairs into the Respiratory ward. IT WAS HORRID, old fasioned,sepia looking and something from an old 70's horror movie, the sounds and noises coming from the people in the ward was like something out of a nightmare. Throughout the night I tossed and turned, I was deteriorating rapidly and my breathing was getting shallower and shallower.

I was defeated

This has all been relayed to me but....At approx 6am on 11th November 2009 the nurses had taken me for a shower, My mother had turned up to see me, I called out to her and collapsed in her arms.

I had a respiratory arrest (my respiratory system shut down completely) My lung had collapsed onto my heart and  had pushed it aside into my other lung (A Tension Pneumothorax)....Mum screamed out for help. It took 3 hours for doctors to revive me and get me into a stable condition and up to the Intensive Therapy/Care unit, where I remained in an induced comma and paralysis for a further 3 days on a life support machine and chest drain. My Parents, Husband and Brother were told to expect the worse for me, and if that were the case they would do all they could to save the baby. In total I spent 8 days in Intensive care and 11 days back on that respiratory ward fighting my ass of to get myself well. Penelope fought with me too...we were an excellent team!

We survived

In intensive care, waking up to be told all this is an extremely difficult thing to process, infact, the whole event has been emotionally so difficult to accept that I have had to undergo Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (C.B.T) to cope with the flashbacks that I had and still have. Through this year I have found out a lot of wonderful things, I have a truly beautiful family that love me, I have a strong backbone of unbelievable wonderful friends and a now 9 month daughter....a sister for Oliver.

I have sulked a lot, I have been angry and I have eaten, and ate and ate to repress it!!!! I promised myself laying in that bed in the intensive care unit at Watford General Hospital that I would loose weight and become a healthy woman as a treat for the body that really held out for me and kept care of the baby that was growing inside! 

And so here I am, going to honour that promise and whets better to do It all for charity, for that intensive care unit and for that bloody awful respiratory ward that really needs a lick of paint or something to brighten it up a bit!  

I dedicate this weight loss journey to all the nurses and doctors that did not leave my bedside...you are all angels in blue.